I have waited two days can I post this now luv?
Huard has been good for the Chiefs
By ADAM TEICHER
The Kansas City Star
Damon Huard has led the Chiefs to wins in four of their last five games.
The ending for Damon Huard couldn’t, under the circumstances, have been any easier to see.Journeyman quarterbacks generally don’t fare well to begin with once they get their shot to be a starter. When it comes for a team like the Chiefs, who have many offensive problems ranging from a shaky offensive line to a lousy running game, the chances for survival are slim.
“I’m with you on that one,” said CBS analyst Phil Simms, who called last week’s Chiefs-Raiders game. “If you had told me all of this would be going on with the Kansas City offense, I would have agreed with you that things for him were going to be very tough. That situation would have been tough on any quarterback, not just him.”
Through seven games, the otherwise bleak offensive situation hasn’t dragged Huard down with it. In fact, the opposite is happening. Huard is preventing the Chiefs from caving in completely on offense.
Huard’s statistics don’t reflect those of a quarterback carrying his team on his back — his passer rating was 24th in the NFL heading into the weekend — but the reality of his situation.
Still, he’s playing well enough that the Chiefs have won four of their last five games and are an unexpected 4-3 heading into Sunday’s game against Green Bay at Arrowhead Stadium.
“If they had a young quarterback in there, it would have been a disaster,” Simms said. “It would have fallen apart, blown up. He’s holding that thing together and he’ll continue to hold that thing together until it all gets better. That’s when they’ll probably bench him.”
Simms has a point. Young Brodie Croyle, the backup, is a favorite of coach Herm Edwards. Croyle is waiting for his turn, and Edwards might have given it to him coming out of training camp had the rest of the offense not been such a mess.
That situation can ruin a quarterback. Better to ruin the 34-year-old Huard than the 24-year-old Croyle.
Except that hasn’t happened, against all odds. Huard is showing qualities even the Chiefs didn’t know he had.
“He’s been more mentally tough than I anticipated,” Edwards said. “We needed that from him. He’s gone through a lot this year. He fought through it. He’s handled a lot of things.
“At times, it’s not very pretty. But then all of a sudden, like in the Raider game in the fourth quarter, we needed to make some plays. And he made a couple of really nice plays under duress.”
Over a few short months, Huard survived a training-camp battle with Croyle and head, calf and shoulder injuries that could have knocked him out.
Those, combined with the other offensive problems, might have dragged down a lesser player even if Huard never looked at it that way.
“There are so many highs and so many lows,” Huard said. “It’s never as bad as you think. It’s never as good as you think. You just keep fighting the fight. That’s what it is.
“Last year we won five games when I was playing and that helped our team get to the playoffs. You get confidence from that experience. But I’ve always believed in myself. To play as long as I have, you have to believe in yourself.
“That’s what keeps me going. There are going to be ups and downs for everybody. There has been for me. You just ride out the bad times and you’ll be OK. I don’t get too high when we have a good game and I don’t beat myself up when we don’t.”
That’s the thing about quarterbacks as traveled as Huard. They know really tough professional times. Huard’s been released four separate times and last season was benched.
The time was right after the recent loss to Jacksonville for Huard to beg out of the following week’s game. The Chiefs were being shut out and Huard left the game because of a painful shoulder injury in the fourth quarter. They scored only on Croyle’s touchdown pass on the final play.
Preliminary medical information told the Chiefs Huard wouldn’t be available to play the following week.
“There was never any discussion about it with him,” quarterbacks coach Dick Curl said. “He just came back the next day and went to work like there was nothing wrong with him. Finally I asked him about it. He said he was going to be OK. There was no question in his mind.”
It probably didn’t occur to Huard to do anything else. With Croyle waiting behind him, once he leaves the lineup, it’s unlikely he’d ever come back.
“It’s motivated me to know there’s this young guy breathing down my neck,” he said. “I know that every game if I don’t go out there and play well, there might be a change.”
That change could come at any time, but at this point the Chiefs can’t expect any more from their quarterback than they’ve been getting from this one.
“Do you expect the quarterback in that situation to light it up?” Simms asked. “Nobody could. I’m sure everybody in Kansas City wants Damon Huard to put up Tom Brady numbers. You know what? If Tom Brady comes to Kansas City, he’s not going to put up very good numbers. So don’t try to judge (Huard) that way. When I watch him play, I see a quarterback taking advantage of the opportunities that are there.
“He’s been in the league long enough that he knows how to work around those problems. You don’t get credit for that in the NFL. Nobody can judge that. People usually don’t look at it that way. But Herm Edwards is fortunate he has a veteran quarterback who can really handle all the stuff that’s out there, like the problems with the offensive line.”
http://www.kansascity.com/sports/story/337171.html
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